To Hate is to Love
by Silver Sailor Ganymede
Summary: BerylEndymion. SetsunaEndymion. Two women have an unexpected meeting on the edge of time and discuss the man that they both loved, but who never loved them back. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon.

To Hate is to Love  
By Silver Sailor Ganymede 

She stared into the mists of time, the ever changing, eternal silver mists that surrounded her. She stood alone within those mists, completely alone, just as she had always been, yet never had she felt as alone as she did then.

Her dark eyes, the colour of the garnet orb from whence her power, her very life came, were darker than ever and filled with tears that blinded her more than the mists of time ever could.

Endymion… she had seen him again that day. Endymion… her heart shuddered at the mention of his name, but even the warmth that filled her when she saw him ebbed quickly away as her soul filled with despair as she reminded herself that he was never, and would never be hers to love.

No, she could never love, not her, not the guardian of time, not the one who had forever been condemned to guard the gates that led to eternity itself. Love may have been the only thing she wished to feel, but no, she knew it was not hers to feel, she knew that her path as the guardian would never lead her to that one emotion. To all else, maybe, but never to love, especially not the love of one such as Endymion, whose path had been decided as soon as time itself began. No, his place was with Serenity. She knew; she had for-seen it all.

She continued her aimless wandering, clutching onto her Garnet Rod for support as she went, for she knew that she was of such heavy heart that she would collapse otherwise. She was broken from her lament soon, however, as she heard cries coming from somewhere near her.

She looked up and saw that she was in one of the areas of the fourth dimension to which she rarely ventured. She was on the borderline with the fifth dimension, the dimension of the damned. She heard the heart-wrenching sobs once more and continued forward into the shadows.

She saw a figure in the darkness, a woman. A woman who, she now saw, had dark blood-coloured hair and dark golden eyes. Beryl… Queen Beryl of the Dark Kingdom.

She remembered the warring between Beryl and the senshi, first in the Silver Millennium, then in the twentieth century. And Beryl's fight was, unlike any of the other enemies the senshi had faced, nothing to do with capturing the ginzuishou or taking over Earth: no, Beryl had fought the senshi for neither of those things; she had fought for Endymion's love. Yes, Beryl too had loved Endymion, just like Pluto had, but Beryl, unlike Pluto, was not able to accept that his destiny was not with her but with Serenity.

Beryl looked up, her golden eyes meeting Pluto's garnet ones.

"Who are you?" Beryl asked, her voice, though little more than a whisper, broke the choking silence that had before surrounded them.

"I am Sailor Pluto," Pluto replied. "And you, you are Queen Beryl of the Dark Kingdom."

"I am Queen no longer," Beryl sighed. "No, where I should be Queen, she rules in my stead."

Pluto shook her head, "You loved him didn't you?"

"Of course I did," Beryl spat back in reply. "You think that I have cried for two-thousand years because I felt nothing for him? Fool. But of course, what would the solitary Time Guardian know of love?"

The last comment stung Pluto but it did not surprise her. Yes, what _did _she _really _know of love? She knew nothing of requited love, true, but she had loved.

"I know you loved him. I did too, hopeless as I knew it was. I still do love him, but I know he'll never love me back; his destiny is with Serenity."

"Then you don't love him."

"What?" Pluto gasped, shocked. How could she not love him? She had loved him for two millennia, just as long as Beryl had, so how could she dare to say that…that…

"You don't love him. You would have taken him as your own otherwise."

Pluto shook her head, "No, Beryl. If you truly love someone but they love you not, then you will let them follow their destiny and find their true love.

"If you had truly loved Endymion with all your heart and soul then you would not have plunged that sword of darkness through his heart. Had you truly loved him then you would have let him live, let him love."

Beryl's eyes too had clouded over. "I know," she spoke. "I know. But because he did not love me as I loved him, I began to hate him. For me to hate is to love."

"We all begin to show our unrequited love in different ways," Pluto sighed, thinking of the sheer indifference which she herself had been forced to show to him.

Beryl's golden eyes met Pluto's garnet ones once more and sighed. "Even after this discussion, I doubt that you can understand the eternal sorrow that consumes me."

"No, I can understand perfectly; we are in the exact same situation," Setsuna replied. "But you are right about one thing: now, although I feel strongly for him, I can show him naught but indifference. You are right, it is right that to love and to hate are literally the same, for what is the difference between the two?"

And so they sat there, a senshi and a dark queen, two whom many would have thought to be enemies, and lamented in silence on their lost love for the Earth king. Yes, they thought about Endymion and the truth of the matter that when you love someone and that love is unrequited, it might as well be true that to love is to hate and to hate is to love.


End file.
